That's what i get for writing something, getting up for a bit, then coming back and just automatically pressing the send button >.<
What i meant with the "sudo argument" is that sudo is the "official" supported way of handling elevation of privileges according to ubuntu ( and on ubuntuforums.org ). If you do enable the root account, and you screw up something while logged in as root, you'll get bashed at the forums for that :) I personally have no problems with either way of doing things, but i guess sudo makes the things a bit more idiot-proof :)
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Oh i missed the part where you say that you have rc installed. In that
case just apt-get update, no need for dist-upgrade :)
Upgrading from previous releases using the
update-manager/do-release-upgrade has certain benefits ( from what is
visible as output ):
1. It warns you if you have low disk space needed for the upgrade.
2. It aborts if your memory is not enough to handle the upgrade.
3. It searches and removes obsolete packages that are left over from
previous releases.
4. It's the "official" way of doing things, so if you go whining that
you did apt-get dist-upgrade and something went poo on places like
ubuntuforums.org you might get a bit of heat ( not that i think it would
be a problem for you after 3-4 years of Gentoo ). For me it's sort of
like the sudo argument.
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Nikolai K. Bochev
System Administrator